Jealousy
by Vaudeville
Summary: Kink Meme Improv Challenge. Prompt: "Rorschach, why are you upside down?" Cracky, fluffy cuteness ensues. Dan/Rorschach


**"Rorschach, why are you upside down?" **Dan glanced quickly around the Owl's Nest before turning back to his partner. His lips twitched, suppressing a grin that Rorschach couldn't have seen from where he was, but that was efficient in keeping his voice level. "And why are you... Why are you hanging out down here?"

In the middle of the basement, Rorschach was swaying to and fro as he hung from the rafters and pipes, some sort of rope or chain latched around one ankle. The other leg, he held up beside it in favor of _not _flopping ridiculously to the side.

The trench coat and suit jacket made a skirt around Rorschach's torso, exposing the waistband of his pants, the tucked in button down shirt, suspenders and vest. His scarf was batting Rorschach in the face and Dan wondered why he didn't just take all those extra layers off.

Perhaps even more surprising than finding his partner upside down and yet indubitably less than it should have been, was the fedora. It was still firmly planted on Rorschach's head.

Rorschach uncrossed his arms and fidgeted, pushing his trench and coat tails back down (or rather up) and trying his best not to seem as mussed as he was. "Don't know, Daniel. Why am I?" he asked, his voice strangled, carefully even over a surface of boiling rage, bordering on petulance.

Dan couldn't help but smile softly as he stepped closer, leaning against the safety rail by his drafting bench. "How long have you been up there?"

Rorschach shrugged up his shirt sleeve to check his watch. The coats feel around him more dramatically than ever, the belt of his trench coming undone, never fully tightened as there were hours yet before patrol. It fell down around about his shoulders and arms, exposing more of his purple pinstriped back and making his fedora fall off.

Rorschach growled in agitation as he swiped at the air, just barely catching the brim of the hat in his finger tips... And losing it as the jerked movement made him sway and the fedora fell out of sight, as did his temper.

"_Been up here long enough, Daniel! GET ME DOWN!!"_

"All right, all right," Dan sighed, pressing as straight a face as he could manage as he shrugged off his own suit coat and tie and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Rorschach's quiet outrage was slowly becoming a dull roar as Dan made him wait. He watched him rock back and forth and spin in the air with his arms crossed and his clothing in ridiculous array. _He looks like the world's most angry pendulum. _

"I thought I told you we weren't having patrol tonight," Dan said as he decided to take the extra measure and shrug out of his dress shirt, down to only a white undershirt. "Why are you even here, man? I mean, you know you're, uh, you're always welcome here, but," he hoisted himself up the ladder to the grate walkway, "but you never come here just to visit."

"Was just keeping an eye on you," Rorschach responded, his voice still teeming with suppressed anger and Dan wished he could see him from where he was, settling to simply try to find the best way to reach him.

"From up here? Hell, I wouldn't even have come down here tonight if I hadn't heard you yell. And even then, I might not have heard you at all, man. Then what? I was just on my way out the door."

Dan crawled through the safety rail and walked onto the large pipes that Dan used to hold fuel for Archie. There was an odd looking cable, one he didn't recognize as something he had bought or used, much less tied there.

He knelt and peered carefully over the edge, looking down to see his partner staring up at him, his arms still crossed though the trench coat and scarf were pooled on the ground some twenty feet below him, thirty feel below Dan. And that cable was knotted around his ankle.

"Can you curl up?"

"No."

"Well, can you at least try?"

"Too lightheaded, Daniel." Rorschach admitted in defeat, before adding angrily, "Just pull me up with rope," and using aggression to reassert himself.

"All right, buddy. Hang on."

It took only about five minutes to pull the angry masked man up, but for such a small man, Dan could not believe how heavy Rorschach was. He had to take a break every couple of minutes to give his tired arms and back a rest and reposition himself for the best leverage and safety so as not to fall himself. As Rorschach's boot came into view, Dan tethered the cable to free his hands and leaned over, extending his arm, which Rorschach took, and pulled him up onto the pipes.

Dan was panting, sweating, and tired to boot as he sat still on the pipes, catching his breath. "Well, you've successfully made me late," Dan told him, though he sounded a bit less than angry as Rorschach leaned heavily against his chest.

"Head rush?"

He nodded against him, his head rocking against Dan's shoulder. The arms that went around Dan's waist were tentative but firm. And unnecessary. The growl that Dan expected but didn't receive (oh, the double standard of the double standards) as he wrapped his arms around the smaller man, made a light bulb go off in Dan's brain.

"You planned this didn't you?"

"Planned what?" Rorschach asked, his head nodding under Dan's chin and against his neck as he spoke, perhaps a bit too inconspicuous to be inconspicuous. "Why would I hang myself upside down in Owl's Nest, put my life at risk, just to make you late for a date?"

"I never told you I was going on a date."


End file.
